Scavenger Life Episode 520: When Scavenging Goes Bad (and then Good)

[Ryanne]

 Check out our coffee! ► broadporch.coffee Join the conversation in the forum>> Our Store Week June 20-26, 2021 Total Items in Store: 7443 Item
[See the full post at: Scavenger Life Episode 520: When Scavenging Goes Bad (and then Good)]

[Temudgin]

Man what an awful day you had in DC, Jay.  I so hate that place and so glad to be out of there.

I feel for your caller, too. I was doing a routine check of tracking a couple months ago on a Wednesday and discovered to my horror that not only had my carrier not been scanning on pickups on Monday and Tuesday of that week, there were no scans at all yet, by Wednesday. So I went in on Thursday to complain to my postmaster and he was completely unsurprised. He said they don’t scan on pickup unless specifically requested to which I said I have specifically requested. And then regarding no subsequent scans he had no excuse and only said that he promised that a scan would show up that night on my packages. And they did, but it was only the local PO scan. So the local PO had just been sitting on my packages for almost a week. With several no-scan packages there went my TRS.

Regarding lost packages, don’t forget you can do a missing mail search request, short of a claim. It has worked really well for me in seeming to shake stuff loose.

Last week was bad; didn’t sell much or list much. Did only about $100 gross, all consignments, so about $50 net.

[Retro Treasures WV]

Items in Store 1477
Items Sold 27
Total Sales $919.00
COGS $80.00
Total Profit $839.00
Average profit $31.07
Average sales price $34.04
New Listings 5
Items scavenged 12

What a pleasant surprise of a week! And that is with no sales on the first day of the week too.

We took our first out of town weekend scavenging trip since before covid this weekend. Things are really starting to feel more normal.

We needed to go to Ikea anyways for new school desks, so might as well make a business trip out of it.

[Retro Treasures WV]

Edited numbers as I forgot a FB yardsale item I sold:

Items in Store 1477
Items Sold 28
Total Sales $1,004.00
COGS $130.00
Total Profit $874.00
Average profit $31.21
Average sales price $35.86
New Listings 6
Items scavenged 12

Also of note, I’m up to $355 in sales from the large Star Wars figure lot I got a few weeks ago. I still have 48 listings left at $1000 total list price, so I’m well on my way to making more than $1000 on that pipeline.

[old_man_marty]

Total Listed: 77 (eBay) and 2 (Facebook)

Items Sold: 1 (eBay) and 2 (Facebook)

Items Listed This Week: 2 (Missed goal by one.)

Average Profit Per Item: $20.17

Highest Profit: $25 Facebook (Outdoor composter)

Goal This Week: 2

 

[Jay]

Keep chugging away Marty!

[old_man_marty]

Thanks, Jay! I’m doing a lot of comic book investing (which is why my general eBay pipeline has been a little mediocre)… trying to balance my collecting, investing, and other eBay sales in the right measure. We’ll see if it pays off. I’ll keep you posted.

I love your newly coined phrase, “Scavenging gone wrong!” I remember one of mine from when I was about 22. I salvaged a bunch of old theatre lights from a theatre I worked at that burned down. They were free and I thought for sure I had a great find… but without eBay (1990), I had no luck in selling them through cold-calling. It just irritated my father as I had them all crammed in the backyard shed for months. I think today they would have probably sold as museum pieces oneBay.

[Sharyn]

I will be going on a vacation soon, and I’m thinking of clicking off all GSP/international selection, and then using Time Away. The message on your listings saying “this seller is away until xxx” doesn’t show up if you just extend handling time (I think). Also, with the GSP messages now saying “ship within one day”, I wonder if extended handling time might also not be acceptable. I’m thinking of message eBay for Business on Facebook and ask about the policy. Time Away is not really useful for its purpose if we can’t delay GSP.

Week of June 20 – 26
Total Items in Store: 1378 eBay, 43 Etsy
Items Sold: 11 eBay 1 Etsy
Cost of Items Sold: $27.75 + $4.50 Commission
Total Sales: $239.14 eBay + $17 Etsy
Highest Price Sold: $53 Vintage Teen-size Mannequin
Average price: $21.74
Returns: 0
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $0
Number of items listed this week: 29

[simplicio]

Yes, I hate it when auctions go against me and I end up with not enough inventory to be worth it. It does make for a difficult equation. Much also depends on the order of the lots. Best that the more significant items be at the start of the auction; then, one could bid on them, and if won, try to pick up additional lots. The opposite is very tedious and almost requires you to commit to overpaying for some things so as to make the trip worth it.

I had a very slow week on ebay. So be it – last week was good enough for two.

Sales: CAD$1699, 11 sales, COGS: $198, Fees: ~$221, Postage: $265 –> Gross profit: $1015

Expenses: $0, New inventory: $515 –> Cashflow: $698

Got some decent stuff at auction, although I missed out on the big ticket items this time. (There were a couple of fancy brand new projectors worth $22k – I went up to $6500.)

Still more good auctions this week… hoping to get an influx of new inventory to make up for my slow scavenging lately.

[DarlinDils]

Total Items in Store: 171

Items Sold: 11

Total Sales: $166.75

Highest Price Sold: $30 Nancy Ann Storybook Western Miss doll

Nice workmanlike week for me. Had to laugh though, I always check eBay before leaving for the PO or putting stuff out for pickup, but this week every time I arrived at the PO or the carrier picked up I heard a ‘ching’ of a sale. Not a bad problem, it kept me busy for sure.  I will be dealing with a lot of pennies soon as I inherited bags of them (so heavy!), and that will make for some interesting research. No purchases as I need to deal with a backlog of stuff.

Keeping organized is an ongoing problem. I hate to break down boxes that are already taped. It is silly but seems wasteful to have to retape – the sheer volume of boxes in the storeroom though is working on persuading me to reconsider. Then I have to deal with work flow and finding a spot for the stuff I pulled from sale before my next yard sale. Luckily the storeroom is cool and in this heat I prefer working there than on the computer. My work habits need to shift to earlier in the morning to take advantage of light and cool temps. So many ways to improve my system, so hard to set them into habits.

 

[Retro Treasures WV]

Yeah it gets out of hand to keep alot of boxes on hand. I resolved my issues by standardizing on a few size boxes that I can make into any other size I need.

I stock 8x6x4, and 6x4x4, 12x12x12,18x12x6, regional A boxes, and 12x12x8 & shoebox USPS priority boxes

I buy 14x14x14, 16x16x17 and 18x18x24 on demand from walmart. I try to keep 1-2 of each on hand.

I buy 20x20x24 or other really large boxes from home depot on demand.

Everything else I resize l x w x h or even go box-in-box to make a much longer dimension.

The only scavenge boxes I keep on hand are a few really odd-ball ones I see at work for things I know I have. My favorites are the U-line accordion style long boxes.

[Jay]

We’re the same with boxes. What we do is store as many as we can without breaking them down. But once our shelves are full of boxes, there obviously isn’t a need to keep more. At this point, we need to sell and use the boxes…or just recycle.

[Simon]

Thanks for the podcast.

Here are my numbers for the week:

Total Items in Store: 4638
Items Sold: 83
Total Sales: $1670.98
Cost of Items Sold: $225
Average Price Sold: $20.13
Average Cost of Item: $2.72
Highest Price Item Sold: $69.95 Cunard Queen Mary 1937 Ephemera Souvenir Paper Lot
Number of items listed this week: 80 worth approx. $2212
YTD sales compared to this time last year: +33%
Hats sold this week: 59 (71% of sales)

I had a great week.  It didn’t feel super busy but I rarely get 80+ orders in a week.   These were mainly low-value orders as you can see from my highest priced sale.

I had a similar, though non-traumatic, auction experience to Jay this week.  I thought I was bidding on a local auction and after winning only a single item I realized the pickup was an hour a way.  I ended up doing a big loop and visiting a couple of flea markets before doing the pickup so it wasn’t a wasted trip.  When I got home my wife decided she’d like to keep the auction item for herself!  (It was a baking dish for a Villeroy & Bosch pattern that we happen to have in our house).

Thanks for the tip about Time Away and GSP.  It seems ridiculous that they can’t adjust the handling time for GSP orders. That seems like an incomplete feature.    I mainly use eBay SEND (Standard International Delivery) so I’d probably just roll the dice on that because constantly changing handling times on oodles of business policies is annoying.

[Jay]

It’s great to see such good sales. You have what people want.

And I don’t mind a long drive to pick up at an auction, but it does depend if its into a busy urban area or out in a rural area. Wonder if you went into SF or Oakland….or if you went down south towards Gilroy or Santa Cruz?

[Simon]

My auction pickup was north of where I live so I ended up going to the Santa Rosa flea market and the Sebastopol flea market.  I typical only do local auctions for this very reason. If I’m going to do 50+ miles each way to pick something up there have to be very large profit margins which is rarely true for online auctions near me.

[Steven S]

Jay, i can sympathize with your DC trip and you can cross truck driver off your list of job possibilities (as if it was ever a thought). I’ve driven those toads and the traffic can be horrendous. I drove coast to coast for 8 years and used to get a little anxious the night before having to deliver a shipment into big cities but once into the traffic it was all forgotten. I would have trouble sleeping while parked in Barstow the night before driving into the LA basin, but after doing it a half dozen times it became routine.

Out here its the opposite for online auctions, I get a nice peaceful drive into the prairie to small towns for the auction items, but its sometimes a 2 hour trip one way so I really make sure its worth it by bidding on multiple items or passing on the whole auction.

[Jay]

Yeah! I cant imagine tricking a big 18-wheeler into a busy urban area. Especially seeing guys back up into tight alleys in traffic. Hats off to you.

I’ll drive two hours to a rural area anytime of the week 🙂

[amandaw]

Jay, thank you so much for being vulnerable and discussing your panic attacks. And Ryanne too for sharing your experience too. It’s so important to talk about yet so many people don’t. I have a random irrational anxiety of driving in the rain so I totally get it. Also as a musician I get performance anxiety only when I am on steroids (for lung stuff) which made me realize how chemical it can be. Anyways, I wanted to ask if you have ever heard of the tapping technique. It’s a little weird, but you can totally do it anywhere, anytime, and even modify it for when you’re driving. I have no clue why it works (there are some sciency explanations out there), but I can vouch that it really does. Here’s a YouTube video that goes through it pretty well. https://youtu.be/085w1xlrGnU

cheers!

 

[Jay]

Thanks. I’m open to any new technique. I go months without an issue and then certain situations seem to pop up. It’s very weird.

 

 

[Antique Frog]

I hit my thigh repeatedly with my fist (this was a few years back) and that worked. No idea why. I was at a talk given by a personal service provider, and she said that the service with the greatest demand amongst her clients was to be squashed.

[mscellaneous]

6-20-21 to 6-26-21
Total Items in Store: 1528
Items Sold: 9
Gross Sales: 626.93
Net Sales: 534.51
Cost of Items Sold: $ 1
Highest Price Sold: $ 225.00 Lot of 3 American Eagle Silver Proof coins
Money Spent on New Inventory This Week: $ 3
Number of items listed this week: 12

Sorry to hear of your trouble driving into DC Jay. I understand. I’ve worked in DC for 20+ years now. Commuting every day for the first 5, then less and less with telecommuting. As my trips in lessened my anxiety got worse. Because of my location, I commute in via I95 but I know how horrible I66 can be and is on a regular basis. And now I doubt I will be able to make the trip in anymore after not having to go on 95 for 15 months.

Big week, which I expected when I listed the coins I had ready. Lots of little things too.

The mail carrier not scanning in picks ups happened to me back in December 2020. I had 1 of my only return requests on a package that was never scanned in. THat combined with the super slow shipping times, led to me having to refund a purchase. THe item arrived a month after I mailed it but I had no recourse because according to USPS I never mailed it. Since then I have walked my packages over to the local PO annex. Well I walk them over in Spring, Winter, and Fall. In summer I drive over as I am not built for heat. I enjoy the walk in cooler weather and I never have to worry about items not being scanned in.

[NC]

Weekly sales 6/13-6/19
Random Item Store
Total items 585
Items sold 12
New items listed 53
Gross sales $266.06
Net sales $169.94

Patch Store
Total items 2572
Items sold 78
New items listed 158
Gross sales $294.45
Net sales $234.54

Etsy
Orders 7
Gross sales $40.90
Net sales $34.77

Net sales total $439.25

Last week was still on the slow side for me but the current week has been better. I started a 1% promotion on all my listings and that seemed to get things going. So far, I’ve been able to get about 20 random items and 20 patches listed on the days I haven’t worked with my dad this week. I still have some fine tuning to do with my process and I need to get an inventory system going with my random items. That should help free up some time once I have that in place.

 

What I do to make sure the mail person always picks up is put a note in my mailbox that says ‘please grab packages off the porch” and raise the flag. I’ve tried scheduling pickups online and they just drive right by so I had to think of a way to get their attention.

 

[ChristineR]

Hey guys!  Congrats again on the success of the coffee shop.  I’m curious how the food is doing vs the coffee.  Exciting to hear that you will be expanding the business.

I had a short trip to Santa Cruz and San Francisco with my daughter. It was surprisingly pretty dead in SF, even at Fisherman’s Wharf.  Sales are slow but I haven’t listed in weeks. I lost my TRS status I think due to low volume.  Plenty to list but lots of work changes and family stuff going on.  We are getting ready to take my son to New York for college in mid-August and will go see Cape Cod and Boston briefly while he does a pre-orientation trip.  Lots of extra expenses right now so I’d like to ramp up on Ebay.

[Jay]

We make more net profit per transaction selling coffee, but we probably make more profit overall on food. Food just takes a lot of infrastructure.

Have fun on the Cape and along the East Coast!

[Utahbill]

Time to get those chili dogs on the menu!

[lizlangsteiner]

I am all about the chili dogs.

[So Cal Joe]

I like Chili Dogs, especially in the winter.

[craig rex]

Chili dogs! Had a pretty good one at the local farmer’s market last week but it would have been real nice to sit down at a coffee shop table and eat it…

[ChristineR]

Thanks Jay!

[Author]

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